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“Oh, really?” said the lion. “Then how is it they have no fur?”

“I daresay they’ve lost it,” said the orang-outang.

“Why don’t you go and talk to them?” asked the lion.

THERE CAME TWO THROUGH THE FOREST

“I don’t know them,” replied the orang-outang. “And I’m not at all anxious to have anything to do with them. I have only heard of them. You must know, they are a sort of very inferior, second-rate ape. I shall be pleased to give them an apple or an orange now and again, but I won’t undertake the smallest responsibility for them.”

“They look very nice,” said the lion. “I shouldn’t mind trying what they taste like.”

“Pray do, for all that I care,” said the orang-outang. “They will never be a credit to the family and, sooner or later, they will come to a bad end.”

The lion went towards them, as they came, but, when he stood before them, he suddenly lost courage. He could not understand this himself, for there was not another thing in the forest that he feared. But the two new animals had such strange eyes and walked the earth so fearlessly that he thought they must possess some mysterious power which he could not see. There was nothing particular about their teeth; and their claws were not worth speaking of. But something about them there must be.